Hara and the Witch

Chapter 13: The Quest Killer

There was once a woman who loved her daughter very much, but not enough.

As a child, she created stories with the same need and frequency as breathing. Every moment was an extension of her wishes and hopes for more.

Her first memory was staring into her mother's distant eyes and wondering what she was looking for, but as soon as she could walk she felt it too: the knowledge that so much was waiting for her, just out of reach. At the first opportunity she escaped the confines of her small home, a cottage of wood fires and baking bread and the same stories each night, and walked as far as she could in a weaving arc, eventually falling asleep in the afternoon sun only to wake in her father's arms, his eyes worried and his words warnings of danger. He did not understand; he worried and bade her stay within sight, but her mother knew what it was like. They didn't have a choice. It was a calling, it was in their blood. How could they resist?

Her father pleaded they stay home, home with him where it was safe and cosy and reliable, but neither listened to him and after a while he merely watched them go, eyes sad but silent. He seemed to realise they would always choose to leave.

The mother and daughter would sometimes set out together, but never did they stay side by side for more than a few minutes. Only occasionally would they see each other on one of these outings and it was with surprise and... a sense of dismay when they did. A reminder of reality and what waited when the sun set. Sometimes the girl would return home to find her father the only one there, her mother gone for days on end before retuning with bright eyes that visibly dimmed as the days passed and the memories of her make-believe were replaced by the life she lead.

When the baby came, things changed for a flicker. The girl was besotted, the idea of having a companion for her quests almost more than she could bear. The family sat in the sun and laughed, each one of them perfectly content with what they had for the first time in the girl's memory. Even so, she could see it in her parents eyes - the hope and sadness in her fathers gaze, the wonder merely resting in her mothers - and she knew it would not last.

She was right; dismayed at the slowness of her sister's growth, she soon enough returned to her explorations of the world. Every few days she would check, but it was well over a year before the baby was big enough to bring with her; when that time came, she closed her ears and eyes closed to the resistance of her sister, eagerly showing her all the wonderful things the world held and pretending she didn't realise the way she only wanted to go home.

When their mother left, the girl knew she wouldn't be back. Her laughter lingered in the house for days, for weeks, until her father opened every window and door and bade her memory goodbye, the pain in his eyes something she did not understand; she wondered how it was that she, a child, could know her mother better than her father did, because it seemed so obvious to her, so simple... she felt as if she had always known her mother would leave, so how could she be surprised when it happened?

The one thing that did surprise the girl was that her sister joined their adventuring less and less, her gaze distracted by growing flowers and vegetables instead of dreams. Still, the girl made sure she came out once each week. They would explore fields for brewing villainy, hunt for dragons, run from thieves and champion against all odds. For those hours each week they were inseparable and even as the stories they told changed, they did not. They were questers. They were sisters. They were together.

The truth, however, remained that Charvay had never longed to leave. She went on the adventures because she loved her sister, not because she wanted to imagine there was more to life, and as the years passed and the children grew older they also grew all but unrecognisable. The weekly adventures drifted off, bit by bit. The sisterhood remained, but it was strained, especially when their father died; Trif thought a quest would fix everything. Charvay thought of the joys in life her sister did not see.

Trif wondered how their father had never gotten over their mother's leaving. Charvay never forgave their mother for breaking his heart.

And then, eventually, Trif had a child, a girl with green hair and a laugh like moonlight on a river. The moment she was born, she felt the way this girl anchored her to the village, condemning the both of them to a life she couldn't stand. She wanted adventure, wanted more than the world offered her, and she was determined to get it.

She watched her sister, seemingly so content with all that stood before her, and she wanted to scream, ask why she would settle for such nothingness when the world was so huge and full of possibilities.

It wasn't a decision, exactly, not something she knew about until it was already happening. She watched her child sleep and found herself packing, leaving behind only the blade she had bought from a dryad one winter and never used, a gift she asked her sister to understand, knew she one day would accept.

Trif did not say goodbye. Perhaps she believed she would see the people she cared about again, although certainly she had no intention of ever returning.

Finally, after so many years of waiting, she was going into the world to seek adventure.

How could she have imagined adventure would reject her?

Trif disappeared, but no one noticed. The world had not paid a great deal of attention to her and she had already left behind the people who cared, so when a failed quester vanished there was really no one to notice, no one close enough to look for her.

The world would wish there had been when, two years later, she returned.

Her daughter would have turned five the day Trif became a name people remembered, but what Trif herself didn't know was that her name had never been forgotten, not by the people who had always treasured it.

Unfortunately, those people were not the ones who mattered.

Trif became something.

Not what she expected, but revenge can change a person.

A quest killer she became.